Sondra

Saundra and Sondra are Scottish forms of Sandra, itself an abbreviated form of Alessandra (which is the Italian equivalent of Alexandra, from the Greek meaning “Defender of Mankind”). Sandra was first made popular by an English writer George Meredith (1828-1909) who used it as a pet form for his heroine Emilia Alessandra Belloni in an obscure novel called “Emilia in London” which was later republished as “Sandra Belloni” in 1887 (a comic story about English social climbing in the Victorian era). Sandra is the admirable, beautiful, intelligent, humorous, musically-gifted, eccentric and passionate protagonist of the novel, albeit from a simple background, but one who breathes all the life and love into the story as she is contrasted against the silly and vapid societal rules of Victorian England. Meredith’s novel is believed to have triggered the usage of Sandra as a female given name in the late 19th century, and the Scottish pronounced it as Sondra (Saundra). In 1925, American novelist Theodore Dreiser used the name Sondra Finchley for one of his central female characters in the novel, “An American Tragedy”. The novel was made into a film in 1931 which heavily influenced the usage of Sondra as a given name in the United States (a more popular version of the film starring Elizabeth Taylor was released in 1951, but the Sondra Finchley character’s name was changed to Angela Vickers).